I'm sure that a lot of professional photographers have had this complaint since about the time 35mm automatic cameras became so easily affordable that everyone had one. I'm just as certain that about the time disposable cameras became supermarket point-of purchase impulse items that these same 
professional photographers wanted to pull out their own hair in frustration.
The reasons for the frustration of course, on the surface, seems to be that the need for a professional photographer becomes more and more limited when amateurs can point and shoot.
However, the more serious situation that lurks underneath is the continual degradation of professional standards.
Now before I incur someone's wrath, let me point out that I'm not saying that professional photographers are lowering their standards. Rather that we as the consumer are lowering our standards for what we will accept.
This is not limited to just music photography either. I can remember the advent of the cassette tape and the access to portable recorders leading to countless musicians recording their own albums and requesting the radio stations play their cassette tapes on the air. Of course, every broadcast facility of any merit would refuse simply because the quality of cassette tapes didn't match the broadcast industry standards. But there were some who did play cassette tapes over the air in spite of the less than standard quality.
This battle between the accessibility to professional or professional-like equipment and the degradation of end-result quality has been around and will continue to be as long as the public who buys and uses the equipment is willing to accept the end result regardless of its quality.
This is where the previous standard of excellence gets downgraded to mediocre and what used to be the mediocre standard gets shoved down the line to sub-standard.
How many times can we go through this downgrading before we no longer have anything remotely similar what we now call “excellent”?
Today's You Tube, although not the culprit, is a perfect example of an environment for breeding sub-standard qualities because it has no standard at all. You-Tube accepts anything that anyone wants to post.
So it's time that someone (let it be us) stands up and says, “ENOUGH!”
In the bluegrass world, I've yet to meet any musician who believes his music is sub-standard or inadequate. I've not yet met any band who puts forth extreme efforts to perform, record and sell their music refer to it as a “poor quality” product.
Quite the contrary. Everyone thinks they are stellar, unique, and cream-of-the-genre. And to be fair, in many ways, many of them are probably not far off the mark. However, when it comes to what we see on You Tube, we could make many arguments against their beliefs.
It's not that music is not fantastic. It's not that the original songwriting is without merit. It's not that the vocals or harmony is amiss. But, it is that we may never know whether any of those things are actually spot-on or slightly off because of the poor quality of the video and the even poorer quality of the on-camera microphone that picks up the ambient audio.
The acceptance of such poor quality video by so many escapes me. Putting so much time, energy and even financial resources into all aspects of a band's music and then allowing the atrocious videos that are rampant on You Tube to be posted, shared and accepted is tantamount to professing to love your sister but allowing her reputation to be smeared. Just because it is possible to own or borrow a cheap video camera or shoot something with your phone doesn't mean it is what should be done in all cases.
Many times the worst offenses are posted by others – unauthorized by the band. But how do we control what is posted in the environment in which we live today? Today's cell phone cameras are even smaller than the 1960's cold-war spy cameras. How do we police a concert/festival and say to all attendees that they cannot bring in a cell phone for fear of a poor quality video of the band ending up in cyberspace forever?
Should tickets have a disclaimer attached disallowing the public use of any “pirated” video or recording? Wait, didn’t we have that decades ago? Time to revisit that one?
The unfortunate fact is that people with cameras (but no training or idea of what their camera is about) have put the learned photographers either out of business or in the position of having to explain why they charge more than the point and shoot amateurs who are giving away their services. The average person has seen so many phone photos, selfies, and bad images from so called "professional" photographers, they honestly don't know what excellence looks like any more. The bar is on the ground, it hasn't simply lowered.
ReplyDeleteThere isn't much we can do about the cell phone videos/photos from fans, other than play a great show and hope that people understand that it isn't a professional recording. I've watched videos of my favorite groups on Youtube and shook my head, having my hopes dashed after watching a bad recording, getting dizzy from camera movement, or seeing someone's head blocking the band throughout the video. All the time thinking what a fantastic thing it would have been if there had been professional photographer/videographer there to capture it all.
The more famous bands like Willie Nelson and others of that caliber, do not allow cameras or videos at their shows, but even they can't stop anyone from using their cell phones to record or take photos. Rather silly to make a fan take their camera back to the car before they can enter, as some of the new phones have amazing quality and with the right editing programs, can produce a better than normal end result. Of course, people could pirate the video, but the only way to stop that is to make people leave their phones home and I can't imagine how they could police that. Unfortunately, society has changed. People are out for themselves and honestly will take advantage of any situation where they can get something for nothing. It makes it hard for a band or a professional photographer to make an honest living. I'm not sure if they just don't understand what they're doing or if they do and just don't give a hoot. I've had moms follow right behind with their i-pads, shooting every pose that I was taking. Granted, their photos aren't going to be great, but it goes right back to the bottom line, the bar is low and people are satisfied with low quality, as long as it's free. For some reason they just don't understand that you don't do things like that. They think it's cool to record the band so they don't have to buy their cd or video. How sad is that?
So, to answer your question, you can put a disclaimer on the ticket, but some people just don't care and because we are so afraid of bad comments on social media or google or threats of a lawsuit, we keep our mouths shut. It's sad.